Almost Didn’t Care That I Cheated: Pound Cake

The May/June issue of Mississippi Magazine contains the recipes that won this year’s contest – and the grand prize went to ‘Peggy’s Pound Cake’. Well, I wasn’t going to make it. In fact, I couldn’t believe that an award would be given to a cake with the first ingredient being “1 box Coconut Supreme Cake Mix”. For shame!

Still, I have to stop here for a second. I thought the world was coming to an absolute end when the 2002 Southern Living Cook-Off $100,000 Grand Prize Winner was ‘Pecan Pie Cheesecake’, with the first ingredient being a two pound, four ounce frozen Mrs. Smith’s pecan pie. Just about fell out with the vapors over that!

At least the category it was entered under was “Cuisine: American (non-Southern)”.

If you’re curious, the recipe for it is here on the SL website and I have to admit there’s this terrible part of me that thinks it’s cosmic that readers have given it just two stars.

Well, anyway. So the next issue of Mississippi Magazine came out and they had this whole big thing about how many boxes of Coconut Supreme Cake Mix had been sold – there was one independent grocer who sold over 400 boxes of it just since the issue had come out. And there were plenty others who hadn’t previously sold that particular flavor that were swamped with requests.

Oh I just couldn’t help myself then! Was there really something to a pound cake that started with a box of Duncan Hines? The whole state of Mississippi is making pound cake and I’m over here feeling snooty. Maybe alone in my snooty-ness. And nobody likes snooty.

I made it. And I made it to the letter so I won’t put the recipe here (you know…plagiarism) but MS Mag has it here…and the story behind it is heartwarming and sweet and nice and you almost want these people to win even if they had submitted a recipe for ice water.

It’s really good (!!) – I made it in a bundt pan (does a pound cake baked in a bundt pan make it a bundt cake? That is a question for the ages…) and everyone liked it – including me and Av, and neither of us are big on pound/bundt cake. Now I just have to figure out a recipe from scratch to substitute for that box.

Oh, and not like I haven’t ever cheated too. I’ve used my share of deep-dish frozen pie crusts. About a zillion of them. Guilty!!